Obama is right on birth control issue

President Obama’s decision on Jan. 20 to require that insurance
providers cover birth control as a preventive health service is
great news on several fronts.

The order means that women with health insurance will not be
required to make co-payments for birth control. And with steadily
rising co-payments of $15 to $50 a month, birth control is
unaffordable to many women.

The directive is included in the president’s Affordable Health Care
Act. It requires that most workplace health plans will have to
cover birth control at no cost to employees.

Church-affiliated hospitals, universities and social service
organizations will have until Aug. 1, 2013, to comply.

The right to choose to become pregnant or not and with whom is a
sacrosanct right for all women. Those presumptuous enough to think
they know better should disappear from the scene.

There are many reasons to applaud Obama’s move. The president‘s
decision respects the rights of women. Birth control is critical
for women’s health and for cutting unwanted pregnancies.

Among other things, birth control can protect women against
endometriosis and can reduce the risk of ovarian cancer.

The president’s decision is also another welcome sign in a series
of statements that Obama will no longer cow to political pressure
from the right wing.

Advocates of women’s health had worried that the president would
not stand up to the pressure from Catholic Bishops.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Catholic healthcare
industry and other special interests wanted religious institutions
to be allowed to simply opt out of providing birth control.

For most women, birth control is a simple fact of life and as
controversial as taking vitamins.

Planned Parenthood cites a survey by Guttmacher which showed that
99 percent of all sexually experienced women and 98 percent of
sexually experienced Catholic women will have used birth control at
some point in their lives.

But to those on the fringes, birth control is a sin.

The usual suspects on the right have lined up against Obama’s
decision. Really, the anti-abortion groups should be the first to
stand behind providing greater, more affordable access to birth
control. With the right use of birth control, there are fewer
unwanted births and fewer pregnancies.

(6) comments

"The right to choose to become pregnant or not and with whom is a sacrosanct right for all women. Those presumptuous enough to think they know better should disappear from the scene." Who are you to presume what should be sacrosanct or not? People like you should just disappear from the scene!

Obama Is NOT RightYour January 26th editorial is as ill-informed as former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelossi, when she said, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”. Birth control is not the issue. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) ignores First Amendment safeguards. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, in 1943, said of the First Amendment, “if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein”. Obamacare coerces religious employers, particularly the Catholic Church, to turn against their faith or face onerous financial penalties jeopardizing the many services enumerated in the Catholic Healthcare Update; notably the almost 600 hospitals treating over 15 million emergency room and 85 million outpatients annually, or its schools and universities which graduate 99% of their 2.7 million students, and compassionately helping over 8 million people with food, meals, clothing, medications, utilities, and other financial assistance through its many charities. Hopefully, the 27 states that are contesting the constitutionality of Obamacare will be successful. Beyond that, perhaps the current 77 million Catholics, according to the Center for Applied Research at Georgetown University, and all peoples of faith will collectively reassert their religious freedom to be free from coercion in November.

The Government is the secular church of liberals. Birth control and abortion are sacraments of their church. Obama is using the law to force the Catholic Church into paying for birth control -- taking away the fundamental rights of the Church to worship God in freedom. If Obama and the left can impose it's will upon the Catholic Church forcing it to comply with the pro-choice movement, then let bring back prayer in public school and make a level playing field. Then young people will have true freedom of choice.

Specifically, the controversy stirred up by President Obama's National Institutes of Health (NIH) directive centers on the concept of “emergency contraception,” i.e. the “morning-after pill”-- a euphemism for abortifacient drugs that kill newly conceived children (called “implanted fertilized embryos” in medical jargon).

The most commonly used “morning-after pills” pills, Preven, Plan B, and Next Choice (note the snazzy politically correct names for these poisons) work in three ways, the first two contraceptive, the third abortifacient:1.They delay ovulation by altering the woman's menstrual cycle;2.They prevent the mother's ovary from releasing her ovum, inhibiting ovulation;3.They irritate her womb's lining (i.e., uterus or endometrium) so the newly conceived child (“the embryo”) cannot implant inside her mother's womb-- meaning the drug kills the child.

The first and second ways are contraceptive, intended to prevent pregnancy, which is a serious moral wrong in the first place (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, CCC, 2370 and 2399) because "...every action ...to render procreation impossible is intrinsically evil.”

But the third way causes the death of an already-conceived innocent child, which is a monstrously evil act (cf. CCC, 2272 – 2274). '...Cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense ...the penalty is ”...excommunication to this crime against human life.” "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication by the very commission of the offense," The Church “...does not intend to restrict the scope of mercy... but must “...make(s) clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.” "The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law.”Since each child “...must be treated from conception as a person, the embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far as possible, like any other human being.”

Its said “no one's a little pregnant.” You're either pregnant or not. Taking an abortifacient drug that prevents pregnancy is bad enough, but killing a conceived innocent child is murder. Therefore the only real medical "emergency" in “emergency contraception” is the woman's fear of being pregnant. But pregnancy is not a disease and does not require a “cure”-- it is the inception of the miracle of each human life.

While running for governor, Mitt Romney told NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts he would agree to increase access to “emergency contraception.” At that time, the MA legislature was considering requiring hospitals to inform and dispense "emergency contraception" to rape victims and to allow pharmacies to sell abortifacients without parental consent or even prescriptions. The Massachusetts Catholic Conference testified that their hospitals would not do this, quoting what Cardinal George of Chicago had told the Illinois legislature: "Our hospitals cannot and will not comply with this law."

Even though Dr. Suess himself was not pro-life, the truth came out of him when he wrote “a person's a person no matter how small” in his 1957 children's bestseller “Horton Hears a Whoo.”

Since 1973, in the US a chilling crime is not just sanctioned by the state-- it is now encouraged and promoted: the pro-choice forces haven't killed 50 million children, they've promoted, abetted, and applauded the killing on an innocent child 50 million times.

Why should I as the Director of a Catholic Hospital and Health Service be forced by the government to provide birth control as a part of the health insurance package I provide, when it goes against the edicts and tenents of my church, my beliefs, and my concience?

Seperation of Church and State is real easy to understand; the government does not tell us how to run our church or its affiliated business and we do not involve ourselves in any movement to establish an "official Church of the United States" like the Church of England.

But let's discuss afordibility. The last time I checked a box of Condoms cost approximately $5.00 while a pack of cigarettes was over $8:00. Cut out one pack of cigarettes and there you go. Birth Control Pills? $60-70.00/month. The average American spends over $3,000 per year on eating out. Hey cut out a few trips to Applebee's and you have your yearly cost.

The fact of the matter is that the argument about birth control is like every other argument for and against "entitlements" There are those who believe that we should stand on our own and pay for those things we need or desire. Then there are those who want the government to pay for anything anyone demands. And in the political arena, when you give people what they want, (not neccassarily what they can't afford) you get re-elected. Thats why 49% of us pay for the lifestyles of the other 51% who pay no income tax.

So in closing please lose your sanctimonious diatribe about the rights of woman and admit what it is you really want. You want someone else to pay for it. Oh by the way, if you're not prepared or finacially secure enough to have a child, abstinence costs nothing!

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